Need for Speed

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

penguin.com

A Penguin Random House Company

NEED FOR SPEED

A Berkley Boulevard Book / published by arrangement with

Dreamworks II Distribution Co., LLC c/o Striker Entertainment, LLC

Copyright © 2014 DreamWorks II Distribution Co., LLC

NEED FOR SPEED™ and logo are trademarks of EA

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

BERKLEY BOULEVARD and its logo are registered trademarks of

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-15384-4

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley Boulevard movie tie-in edition / March 2014

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Part One

One

MOUNT KISCO, NY

THE COPS WERE
waiting for them this time.

When they were tipped that yet another illegal street race was about to take place in their sleepy little town, the Mount Kisco police had decided to go on the offensive.

The night watch commander had assembled three patrol squad cars whose sole duty would be to stop the alleged race. To this end, he'd equipped them with some extraordinary tools: three new highly accurate radar guns, three extra sets of walkie-talkies, and, borrowed from the New York State Police, a spike strip.

This device was composed of a collection of metal spikes, two inches long and pointing upward, attached to a rigid plastic strip. The idea was to throw the strip in front of any car that needed to be stopped and allow it to puncture the car's tires, grinding the lawbreakers to a halt.

It seemed like a drastic measure, but the police felt it had come to this. There was a culture of illegal street racing in Mount Kisco; most of the participants were local teenagers or young men in their twenties, and all were well-known to the police.

But no arrest could stick without catching one of the perpetrators in the act. Truth was, the street racers were all extremely skilled drivers and absolutely fearless. Their cars were highly modified with illegal equipment that made them go light-years faster than a normal passenger vehicle. In the past, the street racers had made short work of ditching any police cars that took up their pursuit.

Tonight, the Mount Kisco PD hoped to turn the tables.

* * *

The three extra squad cars were positioned along the illegal race's suspected route.

One cruiser was hidden in an alley in the downtown business district. Another was near the cemetery along Lexington Avenue, and the third was stationed next to the statue of Chief Kisco at the intersection of Routes 133 and 117.

The tipster had claimed the race would start at midnight. But it was at 11:55 p.m., five minutes early, that three cars came blazing into town.

They were a 1968 Gran Torino, a 1969 Camaro, and a 1966 Pontiac GTO.

They went by the first squad car so fast and so unexpectedly, the officer behind the wheel couldn't get his engine started quick enough. The trio of racers was gone before he even could get his squad car in gear.

Forced to call ahead to the second squad car, the policeman discovered his walkie-talkie was filled with static and interference. The same was true for his squad car's dashboard radio. As a result, he couldn't hear his colleague and his colleague couldn't hear him. It was almost as if someone was jamming their communications.

No pursuit was possible, because the first police car couldn't confirm where the three speeders had gone. The officer finally used his cell phone to call ahead to the second cruiser, which was lying in wait near the Lexington Avenue Cemetery.

But the three racers had already rocketed by this location as well—and the second squad car's new radar gun failed to register a thing. The three cars were suddenly there, going by at more than 100 mph, and like stealthy phantoms, were just as suddenly gone.

The second cop had seen the three cars only in a blur, but still he knew they were breaking a long list of laws: speeding, going down one-way streets, reckless driving, driving without license plates, and, most probably, carrying illegal jamming equipment.

All this second policeman could do was head off in the same direction in which the three fast cars had disappeared. But as soon as he pulled out of his hiding spot, he nearly collided with the first squad car, which had reached his position at almost the same moment.

All this time both officers had been frantically trying to contact their colleague in the third squad car to tell him the racers were probably heading in his direction and to drop the spike strip. But the interference on their radios continued unabated and communication seemed impossible.

As it turned out, the cop in squad car number three had heard the trio of racers approaching. The highly modified cars made a lot of noise when their engines were at full throttle. At that point he'd jumped out of his car and flung the spike strip across Route 117 right near the Chief Kisco statue.

Then he'd retreated behind his cruiser, not knowing what to expect once the speeding cars hit the spikes.

But that didn't happen.

Showing off their incredible driving skills, the three drivers simply avoided the spike strip by going up and over the curb and driving along the road's shoulder until they were past the tire-popping device. They did this while going in excess of 100 mph.

After that, the road straightened out and the three cars simply upshifted to their highest gear and were gone.

It was only later that the Mount Kisco police realized their tip had come from one of the racers themselves.

Being chased by the police was part of the allure of illegal street racing.

* * *

Mount Kisco was located in upstate New York, about ten miles east of the Hudson River, and just a half hour north of New York City.

With a population of ten thousand, the town was known as a bedroom community for high-price executives who worked in Manhattan, as well as a haven for the mega-rich. Secluded places like Guard Hill, Mount Kisco Chase, and Glassbury Court had homes so extravagant that only the fabulously wealthy could afford them. The downtown business district was made up mostly of designer boutiques, posh clothing stores, foofy coffee shops, and expensive restaurants. And at close to two hundred acres, the Mount Kisco Country Club took up nearly one tenth of the town.

But Mount Kisco had a poor section, too. The Lexington Avenue neighborhood on the west side was home to families living below the poverty line. Most townies avoided the area, though this was where drugs could be bought. Local high school kids—pupils of nearby John Jay Prep school—SUNY students, and even some residents from the affluent east side were known to visit Lex Ave on occasion. Weed was especially easy to obtain there, usually at reasonable prices.

Still, the town's crime rate was very low. Since the police had so little to do, they frequently harassed the local teenagers at their hangouts, like the Applebee's on Main Street. And they especially enjoyed busting up underage drinking parties at Pride Rock and under the town's water tower.

Stopping the town's rash of illegal street racing, however, was still a work in progress.

* * *

There was an auto repair garage just north of downtown called Marshall Motors. It was a well-known place, having been in business for forty years.

It was a large, square, open building, with a washed stone facade, many windows, and a rather grand covered entrance reminiscent of a hotel. Signs on the outside advertised body work and tune-ups. There were four bay doors, plus room for many cars out front and along the sides.

On this day, a handful of cars were parked outside, all with various ailments, waiting to be serviced. Inside, a 2004 Taurus was on the main lift, getting its brakes redone. In the next bay over, a 2007 Neon was awaiting its inspection sticker. Next to the Neon, a classic 1970 Chevelle, stripped of chrome and glass and covered in primer gray, was about to go into the paint booth for its final coat.

The garage was a highly organized place, with hundreds of car parts neatly sorted on shelves and walls. Canisters of premium auto paint dominated one corner. The mechanics at Marshall Motors didn't just fix cars. They also painted them, restored them, and, if it was the right set of wheels, transformed them into street racers, packed with illegal equipment that could make them go very fast.

The employees of Marshall Motors were well-known to the police, too.

* * *

Mount Kisco had a different kind of economy when the garage first opened in 1974.

Back then, most people were making a good wage, and many families had two or more cars. When they needed an oil change, or an engine tune-up, or a dent pounded out, many of them came to Marshall's, and the business thrived.

But the money streams had changed in more recent years. As the town's rich got richer, they bought BMWs, Benzs, and Bentleys, and wound up bringing them to their dealers for service. Meanwhile, the poor got poorer and found they had to change their own oil or tune up their cars themselves—and forget about fixing the dents.

Caught in the middle, Marshall Motors had suffered, especially lately. Even the customizing work was tailing off these days. This morning, even though five cars were waiting to get in, there were a dozen empty customer parking spots outside, and two of the bays were vacant.

Business could have been better.

* * *

Photographs covered one wall inside the garage.

They showed a happy kid in various stages of growing up, always with cars around him. At four years old, he was smiling and posing in a bumper car at a local carnival. At eight, he was photographed racing go-carts, again wearing a huge grin. By ten years old, the boy was in a helmet, racing shifter cars. In these photos he could be seen holding all kinds of racing trophies, always smiling, always with his proud parents standing nearby.

But after that, the photos told another story. On his reaching eleven or so, the boy's mother was suddenly absent from the photos—and the boy was never photographed smiling again. He and his father appeared in half a dozen more shots, taken over the next ten years inside the garage while they were repairing cars, both stone-faced and lost in their work.

Then the photographs stopped altogether.

* * *

Four young men were inside the garage today; three of them were working.

One was Benny Garrett. He was a sunny African-American, and the possessor of a big personality. Benny was the garage's “gasser,” or paint mechanic. His work was considered by all to be exceptional.

He'd been discharged recently from the army. While he'd originally joined the service to get out of Mount Kisco, where he went instead was Iraq and Afghanistan, as part of a helicopter ground crew. He'd seen how the muffler shops in Fallujah had been turned into bomb-making factories and how many Afghan farmers had their own working tanks, needed to keep thieves away from their poppy fields.

Very little of his time in the army had been cool or exciting, and he'd seen enough death and destruction to last several lifetimes. When he returned home after four years and three combat tours, he vowed never to leave Mount Kisco again.

But he'd also brought home with him a head full of stories about his time in the Sandbox. As he was always known for his vivid imagination, Benny's friends took these tales with a grain of salt. Just Benny being Benny.

In the next bay, making adjustments to the front suspension of the 1968 custom-built Ford Gran Torino, were the shop's chief mechanics, Joe Peck and Finn.

Joe was the oldest of the group, well into his thirties. He was a big guy, huge arms and chest, a fanatic in the weight room. With a dark face and dark eyes, he possessed a bushy, but well-defined, goatee, and more often than not, he had a toothpick hanging from his lips.

Joe had been at Marshall Motors the longest of the four. Having gotten a job sweeping up the place at the age of seven, he'd never really left. He'd learned the mechanic's trade from the business's founder and turned out to be one of the best grease monkeys in Westchester County.

Finn was the opposite of Joe. He was small, pale, with lighter hair and sad features. He was twenty-five and was the only one of the four who'd attended college. Although he'd earned a business and finance degree at a nearby SUNY campus, he hated office life and never truly pursued a professional career. The day after getting his sheepskin, he was back at Marshall's, changing oil and installing shock absorbers.

The fourth young man was Little Pete.

Barely five foot four, he was aptly named. Fair-skinned with a James Dean haircut, he was a powerhouse in his own way. If he was considered the little brother of the Marshall Motors crew, he was also the most knowledgeable when it came to cars and racing, legal or otherwise. He was also an excellent driver and owned a very sweet 1969 Chevy Camaro that he'd reconditioned from the wheels up, practically by himself.

* * *

Pete was rarely seen without his iPad, and today was no different. It was 2:00 p.m. and his favorite streaming video show was coming on. It was called
Underground Racing
. It was hosted by a very nutty guy named Monarch.

The show was passionately devoted to the street-racing culture. Souped-up cars competing against each other on city streets and public highways at speeds frequently in excess of 150 mph. This was not drag racing run on a track and sanctioned by a thick rule book. This was about going as fast as you could go on an open road, with powerful but illegally modified cars, sometimes for money, but mostly for the adrenaline rush, which was always substantial.

Though the modern version of the sport began in Japan, with enthusiasts racing each other on curving mountain roads, its history in the United States went back much farther. Back in the days of Prohibition, bootleggers jacked up the power of their car engines so they could shake off any pursuing law enforcement. Once booze was legal again, the bootleggers took to racing each other in their modified cars, and American street racing was born.